Nintendo cracks down on DS piracy in Japan

Attempts to outlaw R4 cards, backed by development community

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The R4DS is becoming more than a slight pain in the neck for Nintendo. It's becoming a major piracy threat, hence the Japanese gaming giant is attempting to outlaw Japanese firms from selling the devices.

Nintendo, backed by over 50 Japanese developers. Has filed a lawsuit against five Japanese firms for "importing and selling equipment that enables illegal game programs to be played on Nintendo's popular DS portable video game player."

R4 cards are currently freely available for UK gamers to buy online on Amazon.co.uk, as we reported earlier this very month.

'Back-up' devices

TechRadar has twice requested comment from Amazon regarding the fact that it still offers the cards for sale. We are still awaiting a response.

The cards allows gamers to circumnavigate the DS' in-built copy protection system. And even though they are marketed as back-up devices, it's clear to everybody buying and selling them that they are used to run illegally obtained copies of DS games via BitTorrent.

TechRadar should have more on this situation when we meet up with ELSPA's anti-piracy unit for a full run-down on the state of videogame piracy in the UK next week.